Salman Rushdie described in graphic detail on Tuesday the frenzied moments in 2022 when a masked man rushed at him on a stage in western New York and repeatedly slashed him with a knife, leaving him with terrible injuries and fearful he would die.
Rushdie took the stand on the second day of testimony at the trial of Hadi Matar, 27, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault in the attack that also wounded another man. It was the first time since the Aug. 12, 2022, attack that the 77-year-old author found himself in the same room with the man accused of trying to kill him.
Rushdie recalled feeling “a sense of great pain and shock, and aware of the fact that there was an enormous quantity of blood that I was lying in” after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution — a non-profit art and education centre about 120 kilometres south of Buffalo, N.Y., where he was supposed to present a lecture that day.
“It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” he said, adding that the people who subdued his assailant likely saved his life.
As he recounted the attack, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, cried from her seat in the courtroom’s second row.
“I only saw him at the last minute,” Rushdie said of the man who rushed across the stage at the institution and stabbed him repeatedly with a 25-centimetre (10-inch) blade.
“I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious.”
Rushdie said he at first thought his knife-wielding attacker was striking him with a fist.
“But I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes,” he said. “He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.”
Rushdie said he was struck more times in his chest and torso and stabbed in his chest as he struggled to get away. He was blinded in one eye in the attack.
“I was very badly injured. I couldn’t stand up anymore. I fell down,” he said.
The Current27:02Salman Rushdie on the 27 seconds that nearly killed him
Weeks of recovery
Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre, where he had to re-learn basic skills such as squeezing toothpaste from a tube. He detailed his months of recovery in a memoir released last year.
Although he said he’s “substantially recovered,” he still doesn’t feel at “100 per cent.”
“I’m not as energetic as I used to be. I’m not as physically strong as I used to be,” he said.
Matar, who was seated about six metres away from Rushdie in the courtroom, often looked down during his testimony.
Cross-examination begins
Lynn Schaffer, a public defender representing Matar, began her cross-examination by asking the Booker Prize-winning author about his career. The questioning was brief, low-key and, for a moment, friendly. She asked Rushdie if he would be surprised that Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which he makes a cameo, was her favourite movie.
“I am surprised,” Rushdie said, joking that it was his “most important work.”
The only hint at a possible defence strategy was a question about whether trauma can affect memories.
Rushdie acknowledged that he has a false memory, that he thought he stood up when he saw the attacker approaching, but that wasn’t true.
Schaffer then challenged him to remember how many times he was struck.
“I wasn’t counting at the time. I was otherwise occupied,” Rushdie replied. “But afterward I could see them on my body. I didn’t need to be told by anybody.”
No one asked Rushdie to identify his attacker in court, and he declined to be interviewed as he left the courthouse after about an hour of testimony.
Later Tuesday, Chautauqua County Sheriff Deputy Jason Beichner identified Matar as the assailant he helped detain backstage after the attack. He testified that Matar was calm and co-operative, while his clothes were dishevelled and there appeared to be blood on his hands.
Security was notably tighter ahead of Rushdie’s appearance, with several law enforcement vehicles parked outside the courthouse.
The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
Jurors are unlikely to hear about a fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie’s death, according to district attorney Jason Schmidt. Rushdie, the author of Midnight’s Children and Victory City, spent years in hiding after Khomeini announced the fatwa in 1989 following publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which was inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad and which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
‘Not a case of mistaken identity’
Schmidt has said discussing Matar’s motive will be unnecessary in the state trial, given that the attack was seen by a live audience that was expecting to hear Rushdie present a lecture on keeping writers safe.
“This is not a case of mistaken identity,” Schmidt said during opening statements on Monday. “Mr. Matar is the person who attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”
Matar is a dual Lebanese American citizen. He was born in the U.S. to parents who emigrated from Yaroun in Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, according to the village’s mayor. Matar’s mother has said she believes her son was radicalized in 2018 when he spent time with his father in Yaroun.
In a jailhouse interview with the New York Post days after the stabbing, Matar wouldn’t say whether he was following a fatwa, referring to Rushdie as “someone who attacked Islam.”
In a separate indictment, federal authorities allege Matar was driven to act by a terrorist organization’s 2006 endorsement of the fatwa. A later trial on federal terrorism charges will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo.